Extra: To the Desk of Her Highness Yukari Denka

To the Desk of Her Highness

Your Highness, I have not succeeded in gaining an audience lately in my dream, thus I am writing a letter.

I am pondering law and government these days as usual, and I would like to share a few things.

Many homeless people leave a mess behind, yet in my neighborhood, I have seen at least two homeless people who clean up after themselves after digging through trash bins. They push shopping carts with brooms and shovels on top of bags of bottles, and they do a very good job tidying up the backstreets.

Another instance also involves a homeless person. Once I was getting off work, and saw a homeless person standing in the middle of a busy road and waving wildly at incoming traffic. Upon closer inspection, I found that there was a huge sinkhole on the way going down to an underpass. Vehicles would have had a difficult time avoiding it in the afternoon rush hour traffic. This homeless person took upon himself to stand in the middle of a lane and to direct traffic before the police arrived.

Your Highness, these are the homeless people that I definitely believe that society has an obligation to provide an opportunity for them to uplift themselves. I have also met homeless artists who insisted on selling paintings instead of panhandling.

Such people, with self-respect and industry, are unfortunately mixed with addicts, loiterers, and thieves.

Why do we have laws? Would not a simple definition of ‘Laws are to make lives of good people easier, and lives of bad people harder’ be worth considering?

Of course, who can decide the definition of good and bad? History supplies us with more than enough examples of wrongdoings done in the name of the ‘Good’. Thus we have rights and freedoms for everyone, as basic protection against prejudice from others, and even from law enforcement. I certainly have seen with my own eyes people who appeared to lean toward the rude and reckless end of the spectrum turned out to be nice and courteous. I am not at all free from self-righteousness or bias.

Thus, rights and freedoms are essential. However, they also become loopholes that prevent the police from fulfilling their duties.

An addict, who is homeless and shouts in the middle of the night at a lamppost, should be sent to rehab. That cannot be done without consent nowadays. So our cities have hundreds and thousands of homeless addicts.

Thieves should be sent to jail and made to learn an honourable livelihood. Now we have a minimum limit, and thieves rarely steal that much to meet the required limit. These days the police are even reluctant to catch thieves, since legal consequence rarely comes to the offenders.

So now when I walk by streets where soup kitchens and food banks are located, I see hundreds of tents and cardboard homes. How are four or five police officers going to maintain order when they are surrounded by chaos?

Once I was waiting for a pedestrian light to turn green, and it didn’t. Another rotation of lights later, it still didn’t. So when the third time the motor vehicle light went green, I crossed the road despite the pedestrian light was still red. As I walked into the crosswalk, a few other people made the same move, and then everyone started crossing even though the light was still red. We had lost faith in that light. Later on, when talking to a police officer, I inquired about the pedestrian light. Turns out the light stays red when a light rail train is in the vicinity. The border of the crosswalk was only three feet (1 metre) away from the track, so it was deemed not safe to cross when a train might be going by. But would it not be better to simply repaint the crosswalk border so it is farther away from the tracks? There was no sign saying ‘light stays red when train is near’, so we all ended up losing our faith in the reasonableness of traffic law for that particular intersection. It’s the same story when the pedestrian light countdown does not match the light for motor vehicles. In driver training, we are taught that the count down tells us whether the light will turn red soon. As an autistic person, I have memorized many countdowns and count down mismatches. (i.e., this light counts down 13 seconds before it turns red, or that light will count down to zero, and then the light goes red five seconds after)

But for the drivers who don’t know the mismatches, they would see that the pedestrian countdown go to zero, and brake, expecting a red light. Drivers who are behind them, who know the mismatches, step on the gas to make it through in the last five seconds! The safety feature of the pedestrian light countdown becomes extremely dangerous when there’s a mismatch.

When regulations and traffic law/signage/lights are flawed in their design, they create danger and destroy trust.

When cities are overwhelmed with the homeless, and there’s no work board or social housing, we lose trust in the municipal government. When thieves are not sent to jail, we lose trust in the legal system. When city streets are dotted with drug addicts who are yelling and crying, we lose trust in the police’s ability to keep order. When buses and trains are dirty and smelly, we lose trust, and have a hard time believing that our society is healthy or upbeat.

Yukari Denka, my world is going through a transition. The problem is, it is an unplanned transition, full of un-calculated risks. The fear of these unknown risks prevents our politicians from fulfilling their duties.

Yukari Denka, I know I am not a very good person at all. Whenever I see someone putting their shoes on the bus seat, I have an urge to cut off their legs at the knees. Whenever I see someone litter, I have an urge to cut off their hands. I have a voice inside me that says that those who behave improperly do not deserve mercy. Thus I know I am a bad person.

Your Highness, even if the whole world bows down, would there be satisfaction? Is the ego not a bottomless pit?

Philosophers of old fantasized a world of small countries, with no use for large ships or vehicles, being self-sufficient communities, and having no knowledge of kings or governments. As soon as there are large tribes with an ambitious leader, the world is on a road of no return. My world has been going toward greater governmental involvement for the past six thousand years. Your highness’s world, with small city states and autonomous institutes, might be better off without becoming like my world.

I sincerely wish Your Highness well, and I look forward to meeting Your Highness again.

Forever At Your Highness’s service,

Hitomi